Accessibility and AI Agents Are Now Connected

Accessible websites work better for AI agents, and this is creating a new opportunity in technology. When websites follow accessibility rules - the standards that make websites work for people who are blind, have low vision, or have other disabilities - those same websites work much better with AI agents. AI agents are computer programs that can browse websites, click buttons, fill out forms, and complete tasks just like a person would.

The reason is simple but important: AI agents read the same simplified code structure that screen readers use. Screen readers are tools that help blind and visually impaired people use computers by reading the website out loud. They don't look at pretty colors or fancy designs. They read a special map called the Accessibility Tree that shows what each element on a page is and what it does. When a button is labeled correctly, both screen readers and AI agents can find it and use it.

The Numbers Show Real Benefits

Research is proving that accessibility helps AI work better. A big study of 10,000 websites found that websites that follow accessibility standards saw a 23% increase in traffic. This is because search engines and AI answer engines prefer websites with clean, organized code. When tested, AI agents succeeded 85% of the time on accessible websites, but only 50% of the time on websites that weren't accessible. That's a huge difference - it's the difference between a tool that works and one that fails half the time.

OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, publicly said their AI agent called Atlas uses the same labels and tags that screen readers use. They told developers: if you build your website for assistive technology, AI agents will be able to use it too.

Big Companies Are Taking Action

Major companies are starting to build tools to help businesses use AI agents. On January 27, 2026, Mastercard announced a new suite of tools to help their customers use AI agents in their daily work. Mastercard said that one-third of business software applications will have AI agents by 2028, so companies need to get ready now.

Mastercard's new tools will help banks recommend the right products to customers and help stores give shoppers better recommendations. They're building these tools with privacy and responsible AI by design. Other companies are also getting involved: Amazon Web Services and NTT DATA in Japan announced a partnership on January 29, 2026 to help companies use both cloud technology and AI agents.

The Challenge: Companies Need to Learn How to Manage AI Agents

But here's something important that companies are learning: building an AI agent is easy, but managing it is hard. One expert at IBM said companies can build an AI agent in less than five minutes. The problem comes after that - companies need to watch what their AI agents are doing, make sure they don't make mistakes, and understand why things went wrong.

By late 2025, many big companies had built hundreds of AI agents running on different platforms. Now they're discovering this creates big problems. Companies need to see exactly what their AI agents are doing at every step, which is called observability. But only about 19% of companies are actually doing this carefully. This is a problem because AI agents break big requests into many small steps, and if something goes wrong, companies need to trace back and see what happened.

Why Accessibility Matters for Everyone

The good news is that the work accessibility experts have been doing for years is now super valuable for AI development. When websites are built the right way for people with disabilities, they're also built the right way for AI agents. The semantic structure - the clean, organized way of writing code - helps everyone.

Companies need to focus on clear names and roles for buttons, links, and forms. They need to use proper HTML code instead of tricks and shortcuts. And they need to understand that when they do this work, they're not just helping people with disabilities - they're also building the foundation for AI agents to work correctly. As AI agents become more common in everyday life, this connection between accessibility and AI will become even more important for businesses and for everyone who uses technology.